A very courageous article. I hope by writing this, his soul gets its relief. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680.html An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare By Eric Fair Friday, February 9, 2007; Page A19 Aman with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine. That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a suspected associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier. The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him. Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself. American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong. While I was appalled by the conduct of my friends and colleagues, I lacked the courage to challenge the status quo. That was a failure of character and in many ways made me complicit in what went on. I'm ashamed of that failure, but as time passes, and as the memories of what I saw in Iraq continue to infect my every thought, I'm becoming more ashamed of my silence. Some may suggest there is no reason to revive the story of abuse in Iraq. Rehashing such mistakes will only harm our country, they will say. But history suggests we should examine such missteps carefully. Oppressive prison environments have created some of the most determined opponents. The British learned that lesson from Napoleon, the French from Ho Chi Minh, Europe from Hitler. The world is learning that lesson again from Ayman al-Zawahiri. What will be the legacy of abusive prisons in Iraq? We have failed to properly address the abuse of Iraqi detainees. Men like me have refused to tell our stories, and our leaders have refused to own up to the myriad mistakes that have been made. But if we fail to address this problem, there can be no hope of success in Iraq. Regardless of how many young Americans we send to war, or how many militia members we kill, or how many Iraqis we train, or how much money we spend on reconstruction, we will not escape the damage we have done to the people of Iraq in our prisons. I am desperate to get on with my life and erase my memories of my experiences in Iraq. But those memories and experiences do not belong to me. They belong to history. If we're doomed to repeat the history we forget, what will be the consequences of the history we never knew? The citizens and the leadership of this country have an obligation to revisit what took place in the interrogation booths of Iraq, unpleasant as it may be. The story of Abu Ghraib isn't over. In many ways, we have yet to open the book. The writer served in the Army from 1995 to 2000 as an Arabic linguist and worked in Iraq as a contract interrogator in early 2004. His e-mail address iserictfair@comcast.net.
Not trying to argue here, just asking a tengentially related question: Does anyone know if they use any alternative forms of interrogation (eg. drugs, hypnotism, etc)?
Demeans the tortured and the torturer. There is no honor in this, whatsoever. We're becoming our own nightmare.
definately the choice of a gutless few. bush/cheney/rummy/gonzales should be the ones going to prison - not a bunch of low-level privates who were just following the orders that they issued. im glad this person actually has a conscience and is speaking up now, but its a shame they did nothing while they were actually there. what would any of you do if you or one of your family was tortured? i definately would not sit by and take it. i would be out for blood. i think the bush administration knows this and has been using torture all along to stoke the insurgency. mission accomplised. as is usually the case w/ the bush administration, it is either total incompetence or total criminality. "Oppressive prison environments have created some of the most determined opponents. The British learned that lesson from Napoleon, the French from Ho Chi Minh, Europe from Hitler. The world is learning that lesson again from Ayman al-Zawahiri. What will be the legacy of abusive prisons in Iraq?"
How would increased insurgency activities benefit the Bush administration? BTW, facts? Or is this simply a wild guess?
i gave my opinion, but unlike yourself i can provide reasoning behind it. anyone who knows anything about intelligence gathering will state that torture is not a reliable way to gather info. as the article says, all it will do is stoke the resistance even further. i believe that the bush/cheney administration wants permanent military bases in iraq (we are building about 14 of them over there now). the saudis kicked us out and we need bases/military prescence in the middle east. the worse things are there, the longer we stay and by torturing iraqis, it further destablizes the country and we have more reason to stay. our government has no intention of leaving iraq and torture is a way to ensure that chaos ensues and we dont have to leave.
I made a guess and stated it was such, you on the other hand make no such distinction. If you recall, I stated my reasoning for making that kind of guess, and you dismissed it. Again, facts? studies? Anything reported on this theory by any trustworthy news organizations? Up till now, I had never heard that insurgency was good for the administration or that they were hoping to "stoke" it by using torture. if you want to make a wild guess, I think you should say so first.
This reads like a propaganda piece written by Khalid Shaik Mohammed himself. Should we send captured terrorists to Club Med instead? What a joke. Why don't we leave the military and CIA's job to those who know it best....i.e. NOT the humanitarian crybabies.
bleh, I dont have the stomach nor time for that. I'll take your word it. It does clarify somethings though.
i dismissed it b/c it was silly. you said that most non-religious parents are probably dissapointed in their children being gay and when i asked how you came to that your reason was that b/c communist countires like the ussr and china are non-religious and banned homosexuality so therefore non-religious parents wouldnt like it either. ive got to leave for work, but if you have any specific questions i will try to provide some info regarding it. the insurgency and chaos is great for the administraion and their halliburton buddies. the longer we are there the more money there is to be made. torture is not a reliable way to gather intelligence and everyone knows it. therefore, when the bush administration promotes a policy of torture it can only be b/c they are total morons who know nothing about history or how to gather info, or they are totally criminal and are doing this to make the situation more inflamed over there. i do believe i started my post with "i think" and i gave the reasoning that led me to make my opinion.
An interesting fact about this article is that this guy tortured in Falluja in 2004. That means even after Abu Grahib was exposed, we still continue to systematically torture people.
i think criminal elements of the government either carried out or were involved w/ 9/11. 70% of the american people dont believe the "official" story and 35% believe it was an inside job. a higher percentage of americans believe 9/11 was an inside job than support bush.
As to whether we want bases in ME, I would say that we do want to have bases there. We have a long history of loving to project power. ME is such an important area, it just doesn't make sense to have zero troops over there. My guess is that even our next President conduct a "full" withdrawal, we will still have a base or two there that houses ten of thousands troops in the name of maintaining Iraq stability.
im literally one foot out the door, but i wanted to make one more point... why did we disband the iraqi army AND let them keep all their weapons? why did we disband the government (baath party)? why did we allow massive looting, but guarded the oil ministry? why does the bush administration promote a policy of torture? all of these things do nothing but stoke the insurgency and cause chaos. again, its comes back around to a question of whether or not its total incompetence or total criminality - at this point, 4 years after the invasion and its as bad as it is, it can only be one of those two things. bush is a puppet, but the people running the show are very 'savvy', as a certian eastern conference coach would say.
and who do you think implemented those policies? religious people in the USSR and China? You asked for my logic and I gave it to you, pure and simple. Given that it was a wild guess, I don't even know why you would ask someone to back that up. don't play dumb, i asked you for evidence that the US is purposely stoking the fires of insurgency through the use of torture because it's all part of a master plan to stay in Iraq. facts? evidence? I can go on all day with this. and like you, I am dismissing your 'reasoning' because it's just more of your own opinions based on stuff that you haven't proved to be factual yet. I at least gave an example that couldn't be disputed. so like I said, facts? evidence?
yes, because it's really much harder to simply stop paying wages and declaring an outfit illegal than it is for the army to goto every single soldier's home and taking their guns away. you mean the gov't of Saddam Hussein? priorities. we care more about oil than paintings in some museum (I don't agree with these priorities BTW) because of incompetence. incompetence doesn't mean conspiracy btw or maybe, it's just a royal screwup?
